


Lonely Sky

by then00breturns1101



Category: Original Work
Genre: (it's canon bc i made him and i said so), Angst with a Happy Ending, Autistic Coded Character, Canon Autistic Character, Coping, Depression, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Platonic Relationships, Stargazing as a love language, Written for a Class, references to agoraphobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-22
Updated: 2020-11-22
Packaged: 2021-03-09 22:27:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,648
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27673352
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/then00breturns1101/pseuds/then00breturns1101
Summary: While Elliot and everyone else had moved on, moved up, moved ahead, I was too scared. Too scared to leave, too scared to fly, too scared to leap into the unknown and just take a chance. All I had wanted was for things to stay how they were. I was terrified of change. I didn’t want to keep walking towards it.So, change had walked towards me instead.A short story about growing up, growing jaded, and finding connection with people and things you thought you lost.And about light pollution.
Relationships: Lyra & Elliot, Original Female Character & Original Male Character
Comments: 2
Kudos: 5





	Lonely Sky

**Author's Note:**

> So, this is another story I wrote for a class and decided to publish here since the semester's almost over.   
> Projecting? Who's she? I don't know her.

“So… it’s never scared you?” I asked, turning my head away from the glittering night sky above us and towards Elliot, lying beside me on the blanket. Its pink cotton, dyed almost blue by the darkness, felt soft and damp from dew against my cheek.

It was well past one in the morning, but the late summer warmth hadn’t quite left the air. The breeze that passed over us carried the smell of cut grass from the field we were lying in that had been mowed earlier that day. It blew some of Elliot’s hair into his face, which he pushed aside a little before he spoke.

“What’s never scared me?” he said, wide eyes still fixed upwards and drinking in the cosmos. The lock of dark hair over his face didn’t seem to distract him as his gaze wandered between Mars, Saturn, and Jupiter. I had never understood just how he remembered where the planets were in the sky. To me, every gleaming dot looked indistinguishable from the rest.

“Just, you know, looking up at the stars.” I glanced back up at the dizzying enormity of the dark, of the constellations, of the inky black peppered with gleaming points. “At _all_ of them. Realizing just how _much_ there is up there.”

“…Nah, not really.” Elliot shrugged. “It’s just space. Just stars.”

“ _Just space,”_ I said, mocking his tone. “That _is_ what’s scary. The emptiness. The void. Millions and billions of lightyears of… nothing.”

“It doesn’t look empty to me.”

“Yeah, that’s ‘cause we’re on Earth, silly,” I said, nudging his arm. Earth. I liked being on _Earth._ Full of life, full of people, full of comforting and familiar debris that filled every crack and crevice and deserted spot if you looked hard enough. So different from the cold darkness just beyond the atmosphere. It was overwhelming sometimes, but at least it wasn’t lonely.

“But it isn’t empty, _really_.” Elliot sat up, that familiar excited grin on his face—the one that meant he was about to go on one of his rambling tirades. “I mean, even the darkest spot in the night sky is full of stars and galaxies!” His hands gestured and flapped about wildly as he spoke. I could almost see his dark eyes gleaming with the same energy that filled his words.

“But it wasn’t _full_ of them,” I said, my own smile falling and eyebrows knitting together. I rolled over on my side to face him, leaning on my elbow.

“Nothing in space is _full,_ ” I went on. “Everything is far apart, and just getting farther.”

“So?” Elliot lay back down on the blanket, looking at me.

“What do you mean, ‘so?’”

“So what if there’s a lot of empty space in between?” His hand reached up to twirl a strand of his long black hair in that way he always did when he was lost in thought. “That doesn’t make what _is_ there matter any less.”

“Ha, _matter_ any less? _”_ I poked him in the side with a cheeky grin. “You know, like dark matter?” He rolled his eyes, but I could see him smiling.

“Lyra, just shut up and look at the stars. They’re pretty. How’s that for an explanation, you walnut?”

I snorted and turned my face back up. I could see the big dipper above my head, its panhandle a familiar landmark in the desert of sky.

“Yeah, that works.”

That had been the last face to face conversation I’d had with Elliot before he moved away. Two years ago, our last year of high school, before he got accepted to a big fancy college in a big fancy city 500 miles away and left everything behind to chase his dreams. I was so happy for him. I couldn’t even bring myself to be mad when he barely ever texted or called. He was doing what he’d always wanted to.

That didn’t mean I didn’t miss him. Who wouldn’t miss their best friend of over ten years? Who wouldn’t want to talk to them and see them again, just to hang out? To check up? To say ‘hey, don’t worry, I haven’t forgotten about you?’ We had always _planned_ to meet again, but schedules got misaligned and plans were cancelled, and before we knew it, time had completely slipped through our fingers.

It would’ve been nice to have some reminders that I hadn’t been completely left behind. Already, everything since high school had been feeling like a blur—gray, dull, slippery, hard to remember. The weeks felt endless. The same thing, day in and day out, over and over and over again.

While Elliot and everyone else had moved on, moved up, moved ahead, I was too scared. Too scared to leave, too scared to fly, too scared to leap into the unknown and just take a chance. All I had wanted was for things to stay how they were. I was terrified of change. I didn’t want to keep walking towards it.

So, change had walked towards me instead.

I had to move out because the only school that accepted me was miles away, and I found myself stranded, far from everyone and everything I knew, in a city that felt like another planet. It was crowded, busy, loud, bright, and constantly full of people—but in that little apartment, it felt like I was the only person around in the universe.

A single dim star in an empty night sky.

I could never see the stars from my window. Distantly, I could imagine all the complaints Elliot would have about the light pollution here. His wild gesticulations, hair flung about this way and that, were clearly visible in my mind. _Not just light pollution, Lyra,_ I could imagine him saying, _air pollution, too! All the particulates make the light reflect back and just obscure the stars even more. They should have regulations on this kind of stuff._

It had been a while since I had seen that kind of energy that he always carried, that restless curiosity and enthusiasm that never failed to make me smile. It had been a while since I’d _felt_ that kind of energy, either. It was hard to get excited about anything. It was all just lonely exhaustion.

I missed Elliot—that much I had come to terms with. That didn’t mean I wasn’t a little mad at him. Not so mad I didn’t want to see him, but mad enough that when he showed up on my doorstep unannounced, suitcase in hand, hair disheveled and eyes puffy and red, it took some serious self-control not to yell at him.

But I didn’t yell. I _couldn’t._ As frustrated as I was that he’d practically ghosted me, seeing him suddenly in this state had sent panic like ice through my veins.

That same ice felt like a lump lodged in my throat as I hugged him for the first time in two years. I heard him drop his bag and felt his arms wrap around my torso, squeezing just as tight as they always had.

“Shit, man, what happened? Are you okay?” I asked, mind already racing.

“It’s a long story,” he whispered into my shoulder, his voice gravelly and choked up. “I’m sorry for just showing up like this.”

“It’s alright.” I squeezed him a little tighter before pulling back, one hand still on his arm. “I’ll make tea, and you can tell me what happened, okay?”

Elliot nodded and turned around to pick his bags up. I slipped into the kitchen to grab two mugs and start heating up the water. As I waited for it to boil, I looked back into the living room.

Now that Elliot was inside, I started taking note of all the little things about him that had changed. His hair was short, now—buzzed in the back, still shaggy on top, but nothing like the shoulder-length cut he’d had for ages. He was wearing a plain t-shirt instead of the nerdy graphic tees he used to collect. He was just a little taller—still a few inches shorter than me—and his freckles had started to fade.

More than any of that, though, what stuck out to me was his eyes. That spark that had been in them all our lives was gone. They were downcast, underlined with bags. He didn’t look excited or enthusiastic or even optimistic.

He just looked _tired._

“So, how’s school?” I asked and handed him a mug of tea, trying to brighten the mood. “That astronomy major must be a blast!”

I expected him to light up, to start talking about all the cool space stuff he was learning about, but instead he just got an awkward expression and looked down.

“Oh, I actually switched majors,” he said, rubbing his thumb across the handle of his mug. “I figured software engineering would have more job opportunities, and I’m already good at math, so I changed after my first semester.”

“You dropped _astronomy?_ ” I asked, eyes wide in disbelief. “Why would you do that? I mean, that stuff’s been your passion for—for forever!”

“I just told you why I dropped it,” he snapped. “It’s not exactly like the job market for it is booming these days.”

“Okay, okay, it just surprised me is all.” I took a sip of my tea, a little startled by how easily I’d hit a nerve. “By the way, you never did mention why you needed a place to stay.”

“I kinda got cut off.” He set down the mug without drinking anything. “My parents found my social media, found the pride stuff, and… they stopped paying my rent and tuition.”

“Shit, man, I’m sorry,” I said with a wince. Elliot just shrugged.

“Doesn’t matter much now. I’ll figure something out. I get to finish the semester online, though, so that’s not an issue.”

He rubbed his face, wincing as if he had a headache.

“What about you?” he asked, putting on a smile that I could tell was forced—it was way too stiff and didn’t reach his eyes. “How’ve you been?”

“Oh, you know, just the usual stuff. Classes haven’t exactly been thrilling, but I got a job, at least.” None of that was untrue, so I wasn’t _technically_ lying.

“What’s your major?”

“Ah, actually…” I rubbed the back of my neck, suddenly feeling uncomfortable. “I don’t have one yet. I’m still technically undeclared.”

“It’s alright, you’ve still got time to figure something out.”

"That’s what everyone says. Wish it would just hurry up and happen already. I just don’t get excited about stuff like you do. I’ll probably end up picking whatever’ll get me a job.”

“Oh, so like I did?”

“No—I mean, yes—I mean,” I sighed, “at least you still _have_ a passion, even if you aren’t doing it in school.”

Elliot was only quiet for ten seconds at most, but it felt like an eternity before he nodded again and spoke.

“Yeah,” he said, looking out the window to the city lights outside. “I guess I do.”

The next night, I came home from work to find him leaning out the open window, staring up at the sky.

“’Sup Astro-boy,” I said as I closed the door behind me. “What’re you looking at?”

“Stars.”

He stepped aside to make room as I walked up to the window and looked out. The sky was lit up, but I couldn’t see any stars—just the windows, billboards, and streetlights of the city below.

“Either your eyesight is _spectacular_ , or you’ve gone blind,” I said as I leaned on the windowsill. At least that got a smile out of Elliot.

“A man can dream.” He sighed. “I was kinda hoping more would be visible from here.”

“It’s a city, I dunno what you expected. Wasn’t it the same for you too, back at school?”

Elliot nodded. “Yeah. I couldn’t see any kinds of stars from my apartment. Light pollution and smog and all that.”

We stood there in silence, gazing up at the lack of stars that had been our nighttime backdrop for the past two years. Even though looking up at a starry sky felt lonely, I didn’t realize how much lonelier it was to look up at midnight and see almost nothing but a uniform blue-black eternity above. All the stars were out there. They hadn’t disappeared. But if, somehow, they all had, we wouldn’t have been able to tell.

“You miss them,” I said. Elliot didn’t reply, but the longing in his eyes told me everything I needed to know.

As I kept studying his face, I saw more than just longing. There was fear, nostalgia, and a cloying exhaustion that clung to his features like a veil—gray, dull, blurry vision, and blurred weeks.

A cloying, gray exhaustion that I knew far too well.

 _You look bad,_ I didn’t say then, even though I should have. _You look like hell. You look like me._

I came home from work the next day with an armful of bags and a mission. I had no idea if my plan would work, but it had to be better than nothing. I was so tired of doing _nothing_ as everything crumbled and spun around me. I was tired of letting the world go by because I was too scared to run and catch up. I was tired of seeing that same exhaustion in his eyes as I always saw in mine.

Cheap plastic glow-in-the-dark stars were no replacement for the real night sky, but hell, they were cheaper than plane tickets home. A week of planning later, and the process was already underway.

I was spending the whole day sticking each and every little piece of plastic to the walls, to the ceiling, even onto some of my furniture, until the living room was covered in the stuff. As I took a quick coffee break after half an hour of it, stretching my arms and dreading how much they’d ache in the morning, I thought about why I wanted to do this in the first place.

It had taken hours. Researching, sketching, planning, re-planning—I’d thought I would never be done. Every time I’d almost had it right, I would see something I screwed up—Ursa Minor’s shape was wrong, or the North star wasn’t North enough, or I forgot Mars. I don’t know why it bothered me so much to miss any detail. It wouldn’t have mattered to anyone else. Nobody would really notice. Hell, even Elliot might not have noticed. But somehow, it wasn’t just about giving him a replica. There was only so much astronomical accuracy I could get from translucent plastic stuck to the walls, after all.

This was just about him. About telling him that I cared about what _he_ loved, too. About trying to tell him that he wasn’t alone. That I was still there, even if he couldn’t really be where he wanted to be. Sure, maybe he couldn’t see the real stars like we used to, but this had to be better than looking up at the greyed-out city sky with no celestial bodies but the moon to be seen. At least here, the stars were close. He could see them. He could name them, and talk about the constellations, and the planets, and the difference between binary systems and pulsars and supergiants until we both fell asleep on the floor.

“This better at _least_ make you smile,” I muttered as I finished off my cup and got back to work. After all, Elliot was coming home in just a couple hours. I needed to get it done in time.

Two and a half hours later, as I was laying a blanket out on the floor of the living room-turned-knockoff-planetarium, Elliot came home.

“Don’t come in, don’t come in!” I yelled as the door cracked open.

“What? Why? What are you doing?” Elliot’s muffled voice came through from the hallway.

“I’m fine, I just have a surprise! You can come in, but keep your eyes closed.”

“Okay,” Elliot replied, sounding hesitant. With his eyes squeezed shut, he came inside and closed the door behind him. “Now what?”

I took his hand and led him into the living room. “Okay, just lie down right here. There’s a blanket.”

“Why did you put a blanket on the living room floor?”

“Don’t question me, just do it!”

“Okay, okay, fine, just gimme a second,” he muttered as he lay down on his back, eyes closed, facing the ceiling. I turned the lights off and lay down next to him, refusing to look up. I didn’t know if it was because I wanted to keep it a surprise for myself, or if I was just scared it wouldn’t look like what I hoped it would.

“You can open them now,” I whispered, watching his face. As he opened his eyes, it was like being thrown back in time. Back to when we used to watch the stars in the field by his house, back to when we’d spend hours talking about everything and nothing and whatever came to mind, back to when we were kids, back to when we were happy—when he was happy. As his eyes widened, and his grin spread across his face, and he took in a breath like he’d just resurfaced from being held underwater, I almost _cheered._ This, _this_ was the Elliot I knew, the Elliot I loved!

“Holy _shit,”_ he said, laughing incredulously. “This—you did this? All of these?”

“Yeah.” I kept watching as he craned his neck to see all the stars. No part of him was still. His hands bounced and flapped and rubbed against the blanket. His eyes, shooting from right to left and back again to catalogue every constellation, were lit up in a way I hadn’t seen in far too long. It was like looking at a meteor shower, all bright and glowing and exciting in a way that had me breathless with amazement each time.

“And—the constellations!” he practically shouted, unable to contain his excitement. “You added all the constellations! There’s Cassiopeia, and Hercules, and—you remembered the planets!”

“Yeah, they’re not exactly to scale, sorry.”

“Are you—are you kidding me? Don’t _apologize,_ this is amazing! How long did it even take you?” By now, Elliot was sitting up, turning around for a better view at the stars on the wall behind him.

“Like, a solid week to research and plan out where I’d put everything, and all day to actually stick all of them up.”

Elliot lay back down, that excitement still dancing around him.

“You did all that for me?” he asked, voice pitching up in nervousness. “I mean, it’s not even my birthday or anything.”

“Yeah, I know it’s not, but I really just wanted to cheer you up,” I replied, fidgeting with the hem of my shirt. I didn’t want to look up. I was still afraid, in a way. Like I always had been. Instead, I kept my eyes on Elliot—on his smile, on the way his hands couldn’t stop moving, on the way his eyes kept scanning back and forth across the artificial sky. “Ever since you moved here, it’s like you’ve been a different person. You weren’t yourself anymore.”

The statement hung in the air around us as neither of us spoke, so I decided to keep going.

“All that spark and excitement you always had; I just couldn’t see it in you. You were tired and listless and… honestly? It kind of freaked me out. And then, when we talked and you mentioned how you missed the sky, I got this idea. Figured it had to be worth a try.”

Elliot nodded and leaned his head back again.

“Thank you,” he said, almost too quietly for me to hear. “Thank you for doing all that just to help.”

“Of _course_ I’m gonna try to cheer you up, dummy!” I laughed and poked him in the arm. “What kind of best friend would I be if I didn’t?”

When Elliot didn’t reply, I could feel my heart sink. Did I overstep? It’d been years since we were kids, did he not think of us as _best_ friends anymore? It was a silly thing to say, I probably should’ve just said friend and that would’ve been good!

“Sorry,” I began, a nervous stutter messing up my words. “I mean, I probably shouldn’t have assumed, we can just—"

“Hey,” Elliot said with a smile, cutting me off. “You’re overthinking things again.”

“Yeah, I guess I am.” I gave a nervous laugh. “Sorry about that.”

“You don’t have to apologize. It’s okay.” He put a hand on my arm. “Now, as _your_ best friend, I think you should enjoy the view.”

I smiled at him, and finally looked up. Up, at the gallery of stars I had spent hours arranging. It didn’t look vast and endless and infinite. Of course it didn’t. It looked exactly like what it was—a bunch of decorations stuck onto the ceiling and walls. Each star had five points, and each one was far larger in comparison to every other one than the real stars would have been. It wasn’t awe-inspiring or breathtakingly beautiful, and it certainly wasn’t realistic. With all the constellations I had to fit into such a small space, there was hardly room between the stars.

But while it wasn’t real, it was the product of love and connection and home. It was the result of an effort to bring some light into a lonely sky. It wasn’t anything like the infinite cosmos that still made my breath catch with awe and fear every time I thought about them. It was close and small, _crowded_ , even—but in that moment, it was exactly what both of us needed.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope whoever read this enjoyed-- if you did, a comment makes my day! :)


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